Google Nexus 7 in India

Google's Nexus 7 tablet has finally arrived in India. With an official announcement by its co-manufacturer Asus, the long wait of the Indians has come to an end; but not without a bit of sadness. You can read full specification

 

Google's Nexus 7 tablet has finally arrived in India.

With an official announcement by its co-manufacturer Asus, the long wait of the Indians has come to an end; but not without a bit of sadness. The 16GB version Nexus has come with a price tag of Rs. 19,999, which is a bit too high when compared to its original price in the US ($199).

While there is a 32GB model, and a 3G version tablet, presently only the 16GB, Wi-Fi-only version will be available in India. This tablet would be sold at ASUS showrooms and Chroma from November 20, 2012.

Specification:

Nexus 7 runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and has 7-inch screen with a resolution of 1280x800 pixels. It weighs about 340 grams, has 1GB RAM and Tegra 3 processor. It also has a micro-USB port, a 1.2MP front camera. The battery backup is of 9.5 hours.

Google says, the tablet has been designed with gaming in mind. There are about 675,000 apps and games, a large collection of eBooks, songs, thousands of movies and TV shows, and the latest magazines available on Google Play. With this tablet, one can make the best use of Google Apps like Gmail, Chrome, Google+ and Maps.

Continue reading...

Gustav Klimt Birthday

 

Continue reading...

Mamata is in Group of 5 who oppose centre's new counter terror body

Bhubaneswar:  It's not exactly a good Friday for the Congress. In Mumbai, it's performance in the local elections has been below average. And on the national landscape, it's staring at another huge confrontation with state governments that are run by opposition parties, and its Frenemy No. 1, Mamata Banerjee.

Five chief ministers including Ms Banerjee are objecting fiercely to the new National Counter Terrorism Centre.  They say the centre's blueprint violates the principles of federalism by encroaching upon state government turf. Those on the same side as Ms Banerjee include Bihar's Nitish Kumar, Tamil Nadu's J Jayalalithaa, Odisha's Navin Patnaik. From Gujarat, Narendra Modi will write to the Prime Minister today, expressing the same concerns. "Any self-respecting chief minister would oppose this," said Mr Patnaik.

Ms Banerjee shared the stage with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee at function in Bengal today.  As his party's trouble-shooter-in-chief, Mr Mukherjee may well have a new assignment.  In a letter dated February 14, Ms Banerjee has asked the Prime Minister to "review and withdraw" the order that sanctions the new anti-terror agency.

She wrote, "It is difficult for the state government to accept such arbitrary exercise of power by the central agency, which have a bearing on the rights and privilege of the states as enshrined in the Constitution."

The Home Ministry's response today was not placatory. "We are not passing any new law," said Home Secretary RK Singh.  There was no need consult the states prior to notifying the National Counter Terrorism Centre.  It has been formed for better coordination among agencies to fight terror better. "

The Counter Terrorism Centre, which will become functional on March 1, will have the power to swoop into any state, arrest suspects and fly them out of the state; it will not be obliged to consult the local government. Law and order is a state subject in India.  The new agency will keep state police in the loop but need not seek permission from state governments before launching any operation.

Of the group of five chief ministers that interpret the new body as a violation of the rights of states, it is Ms Banerjee's criticism that no doubt rankles the most.  She is a senior ally of the coalition at the centre; that hasn't stopped her from siding often with opposition parties, in Parliament and outside, on some of the government's biggest new policies.  Her anger over attempts to introduce reforms in the retail sector forced the government into a humiliating retreat days after announcing its new guidelines.

It's not just her opposition but the company that she is keeping that has the Congress in knots. Ms Banerjee has met recently with the BJP- both sides described it as a courtesy call, but there is talk of a political flirtation.  Mr Patnaik heads the Biju Janata Dal, which is part of the BJP-led NDA;  Ms Jayalalithaa and the BJP have been expressing support for each other, most visibly with delegates from both parties attending functions organised by  her and Mr Modi in their home states;  Mr Nitish Kumar is a leader of the JD (U),  which is again a part of the NDA.

So speculation is surging about whether Ms Banerjee is using the campaign against the Counter Terrorism Centre to test-run a wider partnership.

Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/mamata-is-in-group-of-5-who-oppose-centres-new-counter-terror-body-177205&cp

Continue reading...

Google doodles the Republic Day of India

New Ddelhi: India's Republic Day parade extended its route from the roads of New Delhi to the Google India homepage in the form of a doodle.
The Google doodle commemorating India's 63rd Republic shows National Bravery Award winning children riding on the backs of decorated elephants, quite like the actual parade on Rajpath, New Delhi. The Google logo appears as a rangoli-like motif in the background.
Nineteen of the 24 children selected for the National Bravery Award – 2009 are participating in the Republic Day parade in New Delhi. Five children have got the award posthumously.

While there have been a number of India's Independence Day doodles on the Google home page, this is the second Republic Day doodle to feature on Google India's home page. The previous Republic Day of India doodle was put in 2010 and that shows the Republic Day action in the air - fighter aircraft decorating the sky with the Tricolour.
The highlight of this year's Republic Day parade in New Delhi is the 3,000 kms range Agni-IV missile. The Intermediate Range Surface-to-Surface Ballistic Missile mounted on a road mobile launcher is being paraded by the Defence Research & Development Organisation.
The Republic Day of India Google doodle will be visible to Google users in India.
Google posted 260 doodles in 2011. This figure is only nominally higher than the 258 doodles that Google put up on its home page in 2010. Some of the doodles were limited to Google's country specific home pages while others appeared globally.
Google recently announced the revamp of its Doodle site (www.google.com/doodles) which houses all Google doodles since the very first back in 1998.

Continue reading...

Kushwaha row: BJP doublespeak on corruption?

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) anti-corruption plank has taken a hit after its leadership rejected the demand to reverse the decision of inducting scam-tainted leader former BSP MLA Babu Singh Kushwaha in Uttar Pradesh.

A day after he switched loyalties and moved to the BJP, the CBI raided former Mayawati minister Babu Singh Kushwaha. An FIR has been filed against him in the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam, but sources say that he is unlikely to be arrested for now. He is believed to be co-operating with the investigators. An embarrassed BJP claimed that the raids were a Congress-BSP plot.

A visibly embarrassed BJP top brass went into a huddle. A retreat now as they did with DP Yadav in 2004 could be counterproductive. So, the BJP did the next best thing, denying Kushwaha a party ticket, but playing the caste card.
For the BJP now, offence is the best defence. In UP's complex caste matrix, the party now wants to reach out to backward Keori votes through Kushwaha, but on the flip side, the question is will it not disturb the BJP's core urban voteback in the state.
A section of the party, though, was clearly upset, including LK Advani who rode a rath recently to campaign against corruption.
The UP state BJP working committee member IP Singh has even been suspended after he spoke out against the top brass decision to induct Kushwaha into the party. IP Singh had said, "The decision to bring Kushwaha in was a blunder. The BJP must review its decision and show him the door."
So the BJP remained divided over the entry of Kushwaha, even as BJP Vice President Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that the tainted former minister will not be given a ticket, nor will he be their star campaigner.
The NDA allies were not impressed either. However, for the Congress though, it was an opportunity to strike back.
Watching all the chaos, the question is whether the Congress is the prince. The more all the opposition parties squabble amongst themselves, the better the Congress's chance of getting new votes.

Continue reading...

Making sense of Google's seemingly whacky concepts

San Francisco: In its self-proclaimed drive to make the world a better place, Google has immersed itself in far more than Internet search and online ads. But driverless cars and a wind energy farm in the Atlantic Ocean?

It may not always be immediately apparent to frustrated investors - they wish management would be more frugal and focus more on the stock price - but there's usually some calculated logic underlying Google's unconventional strategy.

Google's brain trust - founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with CEO Eric Schmidt - clearly think differently than most corporate leaders, and may eventually encourage more companies to take risks that might not pay off for years, if ever.

The time is ripe for long-term thinking, with memories still fresh of the financial meltdown - a byproduct of Wall Street's demands for companies to deliver ever-higher profits every three months and meet earnings targets set by analysts.

"Everywhere you look in this country, it seems that we are suffering from the consequences of too much short-term thinking," said longtime Silicon Valley forecaster Paul Saffo, managing director of foresight for Discern Analytics.

"Google doesn't have this disease," he said. "It is one of the few lone bright spots we have in that regard."

Even so, it might be difficult to fathom how Google can justify paying for the development of robotic technology that has driven cars thousands of miles on California roads without a major accident and committing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to help build a wind farm hundreds of miles from the Eastern Seaboard.

With a little imagination, it's easier to see how Google might benefit. For instance, Saffo surmises that the driverless technology eventually could be implanted into a fleet of vehicles used for car sharing.

Google then could use a camera to take new pictures of streets and highways that appear in its online maps, another example of a service that once seemed like a diversion from its Internet search engine but is now an indispensable tool that helps the company sell advertising.

The company announced Tuesday it would buy a 37.5 percent stake in the Atlantic Ocean wind energy project, investing in a network of deepwater transmission lines to bring power from still-to-be-built offshore wind farms.

That makes more sense when you realize Google already sucks up massive amounts of energy from the power grid and expects to consume even more in the next decade as it opens more data centers filled with row upon row of computers to run its Internet services.

And if the value of renewable energy rises, as many analysts expect, Google eventually could even sell its stake for a tidy profit.

Or it could turn out to be a total bust, something Page and Brin warned potential investors could happen in April 2004 when they laid out their iconoclastic approach to business before Google sold its stock in an initial public offering.

"Our long-term focus may simply be the wrong business strategy," they warned. "Competitors may be rewarded for short-term tactics and grow stronger as a result. As potential investors, you should consider the risks around our long-term focus."

The Google founders also told investors that the company would be willing to finance projects with just a 10 percent chance of yielding a return of at least $ 1 billion - bets that seem "very speculative or even strange."

Google's transparency about its unorthodox ways may be one reason the company hasn't been stung yet by an outcry from its shareholders, although most analysts agree the stock price probably would be higher if management were to use some of the company's $ 30 billion in cash to pay a quarterly dividend or buy back shares.

Google stock closed at $ 541.39 on Tuesday, down 13 percent for the year and far off its all-time high of nearly $ 750 three years ago.

The company's uninterrupted streak of prosperity since its August 2004 IPO hasn't hurt, either.

Google can afford to gamble more frequently than most companies because it dominates the Internet's most lucrative market, the ads running alongside search results. And Google has seized on that opportunity in a manner that would make Gordon Gekko proud, beating back its competitors to boost its annual revenue from just $ 86 million in 2001 to nearly $ 30 billion now.

The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., began branching out beyond search well before it went public.

It set up an online news section that compiles the day's top stories in 2002. Just a few months before its August 2004 IPO, Google unveiled a free e-mail service that boasted an unprecedented - and still expanding - amount of space per inbox.

In 2004, it bought an obscure digital mapping service called Keyhole that eventually turned Google into the place to go for directions. Even rival CEOs, such as Yahoo's Carol Bartz, say it's the best around.

More recently, Google created a free mobile operating system called Android that now powers millions of smart phones. This month, it's rolling out technology with Sony that weds traditional television viewing with Web surfing.

Google's expansion into mobile phones and television never seemed like quantum leaps for the company because they are little more than attempts to transplant its advertising model onto other Internet-connected screens that attract a lot of eyeballs.

The company also has poured money into building more widely available and faster ways for people to connect to the Internet, reasoning that it will make money if more Web surfers have the opportunity to use its ubiquitous services.

Schmidt, Google's CEO, frequently tries to defuse the perception that the company is frivolous. He contends the company's formula is disciplined: 70 percent of its resources go to the main search business, 20 percent to other projects connected to search, and 10 percent to initiatives that have nothing to do with search.

It's difficult to argue with the formula so far, said Colin Gillis of the stock market research firm BGC Financial.

"As an analyst, I do hammer them on their (rising) expenses and some of their questionable investments," he said. "But as a user of all their products, I love them. And from a purely personal perspective, I appreciate that Google is trying to use technology to solve the world's problems."

Continue reading...

Google Instant officially launched in India

Google Instant officially launched in India
Google Instant has been accessible here in India for a while now. In fact, we got it on some of our machines (on Google.com) on the launch date itself.
The company has now officially launched it in the Indian market. We suppose it would now work by default on Google.co.in.

Google spoke about this new development:

A few weeks ago we introduced a new way of searching that makes search more interactive and helps you find information more quickly and easily. We called it Google Instant, and today we are excited to be rolling out Instant in India.
Google Instant combines three core features — dynamic results, Autocomplete predictions, and ‘scroll-to-search’ functionality — to deliver smart, predictive results as you type. You can watch the video below that explains Google Instant in greater depth.

Continue reading...

Congress padyatra ineffective, says BJP

www.newsoverindia.blogspot.com

The ruling BJP in Karnataka on Thursday said Congress' defeat in the by-elections to Gulbarga South and Kadur Assembly constituencies showed that its Bellary padayatra on mining issue was ''ineffective''.

''The Congress lost in both which shows that the padyatra has been ineffective. They failed to retain even their seat in Kadur which clearly indicates that people want to vote for improvement and have done so,'' Home Minister V S Acharya told PTI here. Reacting to BJP's defeat in Gulbarga South Acharya said, "We had hoped to win both the seats but the defeat in Gulbarga South was unexpected." He attributed the victory of JDS candidate Aruna Patil to "sympathy wave". In the bypolls held on September 13, BJP's Y C Vishwanath wrested the Kadur seat but failed to retain Gulbarga South where Patil defeated Congress's Ajay Singh, son of former Chief Minister Dharam Singh. The Congress had last month undertaken a 302-km padayatra from Bangalore to Bellary on the issue of illegal mining. State unit BJP President K S Eshwarappa expressed satisfaction over the results. The outcome had shown the Congress cannot continue to "divide" people in the name of caste, he said referring to the party's defeat in Kadur. In Gulbarga South, the electorate have rejected "dynastic politics" by dumping Congress nominee Ajay Singh, he said. He defended the BJP's decision to deny ticket to Aruna, wife of late BJP MLA Chandrasekhara Patil Revoor, standing for elections on a JDS ticket, saying she was fielded due to "indiscipline". He sought to downplay victory of JDS in Gulbarga by ascribing it to the sympathy factor. The poll verdict was also against the leadership of Siddaramaiah, Dharam Singh and Union Labour Minister Mallikajun Kharge, he claimed. He said Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa planned to expand his ministry within a month

Continue reading...

Kashmir's separatist leaders reject outcome of all-party meeting

SRINAGAR: Separatist leaders in Jammu and Kashmir have rejected the outcome of Wednesday's over five-hour-long All-Party meeting, unanimously terming the endeavor a futile and time buying exercise aimed to deny Kashmiris their inalienable right to self-determination.

The chairman of Hurriyat (Geelani) Syed Ali Shah Geelani termed it as a time gaining exercise.

He further said New Delhi and its allies in Kashmir have been creating much hype about the meeting.

"The outcome of the meeting was disappointing and negative for Kashmiris. The pro-India parties stuck to their traditional stand on Kashmir. I have no doubt to say that these meetings have proven to be futile rather time gaining exercise," Geelani said.

Geelani said it is high time for India and its allies in Kashmir to adopt a realistic approach to resolve the dispute.

"I also make it clear that the Conglomerate will not talk with the All Party Delegation during its visit to Kashmir. I reiterate that ongoing movement will continue till our five demands are implemented on ground," Geelani maintained.

Geelani rejected the statement of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the protests in Kashmir are instigated by apparently by the pro-freedom groups.

"New Delhi and the state government know the reality and they are trying to divert the attention from the ongoing agitation by blaming pro-freedom parties for violence," he said.

Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik termed the all party meeting a futile exercise.

Malik said in the past 63 years the Kashmir dispute has consumed three generations.

"In 90s, guns were the reference points and it internationally highlighted the Kashmir dispute. After guns, there was a transition of the Kashmiris' movement into a peaceful stage. However, New Delhi has kept the movement lingering at the cost of Kashmiris," Malik said.

He said instead of acknowledging the sacrifices of Kashmiris, the All Party Meeting has left no stone unturned to appease the communal and anti-Kashmir parties.

"The meeting took place at a time when Kashmiris are being killed with impunity and whole Valley is continuously reeling under curfew," he said.

Castigating the BJP for opposing revocation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), Malik said when the party was in power, it engaged even the militant leadership for resolving the Kashmir dispute.

"This shows the BJP's hypocrisy. It is playing politics on the blood of Kashmiris," he said.

Malik warned that if India delays the resolution of the dispute, Kashmiris will be forced to take violent recourse.

"Instead of these futile meetings, India should on priority resolve the dispute taking the aspirations of Kashmiris into consideration. Delaying the vexed issue will have dangerous consequences," Malik maintained.

The chairman of Hurriyat (M), Mirwaiz Umar Farooq termed the All Party Meeting as a façade to hoodwink the international community and Kashmiris.

Continue reading...

Google to Announce Visual Search Updates on 9/8

 

Google is hosting a special media event on September 8 to showcase, what the company is now teasing as, "latest technological innovation" and "inside look at the evolution of Google search" in San Francisco, California. Though not much is known, Google had introduced several visual search products for the Android platform in the past, including Google Shopper and Google Goggles. It is also unclear if Google's announcement will be limited to Android and/or web search, but the company had recently purchased Like.com for its visual search technology portfolio in an effort to expand search to iOS devices, including the   iPhone .

Continue reading...